A murderer sentenced to death in South Carolina, who has chosen to face execution, claims he was not given a choice while appealing his death sentence.
Richard Bernard Moore, 57, was sentenced to death after being convicted of murder, assault with intent to kill, armed robbery and assault on a firearm in 2001.
He said he was forced to choose between death from electric shock or shooting due to a shortage of deadly injecting chemicals, saying both methods were “illegal and unconstitutional”.
Drug companies refuse to supply deadly ingredients
Recent executions in the United States elsewhere have been by lethal injection, but South Carolina has been forced to abandon the method because drug manufacturers refuse to supply the necessary ingredients.
As a result, Moore was forced to choose between an electric chair or a shot squad.
The shooting squad has been used only three times in the United States since 1976 – all in western Utah – when the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty.
In court records, Moore said he did not agree to even have to make a decision.
“I do not believe and do not recognize that the shooting or the electric shock are legal or constitutional,” he said.
“I do not trust the department [of Corrections] it must be allowed to certify that a legally prescribed method, such as a lethal injection, is not available without demonstrating a bona fide effort to provide it.
“However, I am more strongly opposed to death by electric shock. Since the department says I have to choose between shooting, or electric shock, or being executed with electric shock, I will choose a shot squad.
“I do not intend to give up any challenges to electric shock or shooting by making elections,” he added.
If executed on schedule on April 29th, he will be the first person killed in the state since 2011 and the fourth in the country to die in nearly 50 years.
An electric shock has been used in seven of the 43 executions in South Carolina since 1985. The last time was in 2008.
Cruel and unusual punishment
There were three executions in the United States this year and there were 11 in 2021, compared to 17 in 2020.
Moore’s lawyers asked the state’s Supreme Court to postpone his death, while another court determined whether any of the available methods was a cruel and unusual punishment.
His lawyers are also asking the state Supreme Court to postpone the execution so that the US Supreme Court can determine whether his death sentence is a disproportionate punishment compared to such crimes. State judges rejected a similar complaint last week.
The South Carolina Corrections Agency said last month that it had completed the development of protocols for the executions of executed men and had completed $ 53,600 (£ 41,000) in repairing a death chamber in Colombia by installing a metal chair with restraints that is facing a wall with a rectangular opening of 15 feet.
In the event of execution, three volunteer prisoners will train their rifles on the convicted prisoner’s heart.
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